Dark Souls: The Willow King has a release date, and it doesn’t have to wait until 2026 or even 2025.

It won’t be a new game (FromSoftware’s developers are human, and only a few days after the release of the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC), but a book. It’s not silly to turn the IP into a transmedia in this way, because in the case of other FromSoftware games, the story is easier to understand (like Elden Ring), but in other cases (like Bloodborne), you could call the story hard to follow unless you bury yourself in it completely.

But these are not linear experiences. A book is like that: it has a beginning, it has an end, and there is no single interpretation of what is in it. Dark Souls: The Willow King is not Dark Souls 4, but it could be the story of Dark Souls 4, which is the book that was given this description: “The mighty King Ustrad of Uthrel united the flame after his servant Herad failed and was consumed by the fire, reduced to ashes. Now the time has come to reunite the fire, but Ustrad refuses to do his duty to his kingdom. Herad, resurrected as unfired, returns to unite three mighty warriors to venture into the Willow King’s domain and do what must be done…”.

So the story book, by definition, will not include the catacombs or the poisonous swamps, so it follows that we won’t end up slamming the controller we use for the game against the wall in one form or another in anger. Otherwise, everything that made Dark Souls what it is will be in Dark Souls: The Willow King, which is available for pre-order (it’s not just games that tend that way). So we are not far away from the release…

And it’s not that far away, because we already know the release date: Dark Souls: The Willow King will be released on August 27th.

Source: Gamingbible, Amazon